Friday, March 23, 2012

This Evolutionist Just Dissented From Their Official Motto, But Then Rationalized it (Kind of)

Massimo Pigliucci just said that Theodozius Dobzhansky’s famous statement (and paper title)—nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution—is “patently wrong.” Of course Pigliucci is not walking back any of evolution’s false epistemological claims, such as that evolution is as much a fact as is gravity, heliocentrism or the round shape of the earth. But it is a positive step to see an evolutionist at least concede that, what has amounted to the evolutionist’s official motto, is obviously a false claim. But then Pigliucci appears to justify the lie as a necessary pedagogical device:

Problem is, Dobzhansky was writing for an audience of science high school teachers

As though it is OK to tell lies to high school teachers.

That reminds me of the high school biology teacher who explained to me that they couldn’t allow any evidential problems or contradictions into the curriculum because that would “confuse the students.” We certainly wouldn’t want that.

Another common evolutionary tactic is to threaten those making the curriculum decisions with all manner of doom and gloom if evolutionary dogma is not enforced, as did several members of that evolutionary mouthpiece the National Academy of Science this week:

By undermining the teaching of evolution in Tennessee’s public schools, HB368 and SB893 would miseducate students, harm the state’s national reputation, and weaken its efforts to compete in a science-driven global economy.

Miseducate students? This coming from those who have dominated our failing public schools, teaching all manner of lies about the origin of life and faked embryos to moths and horse fossils. Unfortunately the National Academy of Science has long since compromised itself by insisting that the religious theory of evolution is a fact (once again, your tax dollars at work).

But by far the most common, powerful, tactic evolutionists use to justify their dogma is, as usual, the creationism warning. Teaching the facts and allowing evolution to be criticized, is really a conspiracy, as Eugenie Scott ominously warned last month at the University of South Florida, for it is “a backdoor way of getting creationism into the curriculum [1:18]”:

19 comments:

Evolutionists lying to students is nothing new. How many times have Haeckel's fraudulent pictures been used to indoctrinate them?

Why must the alleged "scientific theory" of common ancestry evolution be protected from scientific scrutiny? Imagine if Einstein or Newton's theories could never be challenged or questioned. Common ancestry evolution cannot be empirically tested, yet it can't be criticized or doubted?!?! Educators are not allowed to teach students the problems with the 'theory' or that many scientists reject it and why? Insane!

Be careful what you wish for. Students who are trained to take a long, hard, skeptical look at scientific theories like evolution could easily turn those critical thinking tools on their own religious beliefs - or yours. Are you really sure you want that?

Be careful what you wish for. Students who are trained to take a long, hard, skeptical look at scientific theories like evolution could easily turn those critical thinking tools on their own religious beliefs - or yours. Are you really sure you want that?

Scott,Massimo self identifies as a biologist. This of course doesn't support CH's equating a statement which is mostly true to a lie. Describing the earth as round is mostly true,but it is an oblate spheroid . Was CH lying when he wrote that the earth has a round shape?

My point is that Cornelius has created this stereotypical group called "evolutionists" in which he characterizes as religious and dogmatic. He identifies Massimo as part of this group for the purpose of sensationalizing what he wrote.

While Massimo might identify himself as biologist, he's also identifies himself as a philosopher. As such, it would come as no surprise that he might have reservations of blurring the line of what can be explained the the "light of evolutionary theory".

As a biologist I’m much less intrigued by, and indeed tend to be somewhat guarded against, this sort of thing. Moreover, as a philosopher I simply don’t buy Dan Dennett’s idea that “Darwinism” (which of course is not a scientific theory, but an ideological-philosophical position) is a “universal acid,” as expressed most famously in his eminently readable Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.

Massimo's illustrates this by pointing out that "nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution" is only true at a specific level of reductionism. That is, there are aspects of biology that are sufficiently self-contained to the point that we've been able to make progress before and independent of Darwinism. As such, he has reservations as to whether it's application is also valid at the level of chemistry.

I suspect that Lewontin’s analysis simply doesn’t fit many of the proposed expansions of Darwinian theory. It works for computer algorithms, as I mentioned above, but not for memes (whatever they are), nor — likely — for DKS, and probably not for Smolin’s parallel universes.

Also, as a philosopher, his analysis is also based on epistemological grounds.

I guess I’m not bothered by this “failure” because I am happy with scientific theories having proper domains of application and because I’m somewhat suspicious of “theories of everything.” My pluralism about scientific theories is to be taken as epistemologically grounded, not as a deeper ontological statement. That is, I don’t know (nobody does, regardless of what they’ll tell you) whether the total reality of the universe can in principle be described by a single theory unifying all the special sciences. But I think it is pretty plain for everyone but the most dogged reductionist to see that in practice we will have to do with special theories for special purposes, probably forever.

What's interesting is Deutsch applies this same "scary smartness" to the process of science as a whole, by expanding on Popper's explanation for how we create knowledge.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, I'd highly recommend both of his books.

In fact, Deutsch's first book weaves these aspects, among others, together to create a sort of high-level, corse-grained theory of everything. His second books addresses the implications of this theory.

Massimo Pigliucci just said that Theodozius Dobzhansky’s famous statement (and paper title)—nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution—is “patently wrong.”

He also writes, further down:

The bottom line is that I am suspicious of theoretical approaches to biological evolution that don’t seem to take on board what the Darwinian theory actually says. As is well known, the best summary of what the latter consists of was given by Richard Lewontin, and it is still today an obligatory station for any serious discussion of “Darwinism.”

Lewontin was able to provide a highly formal and abstract rendition of the Darwinian theory, which boils down to the statement that a given system will evolve in Darwinian fashion if three conditions are met: 1) There is variation within populations of evolving entities; 2) The variants in question differ in their fitness (i.e., their ability to persist and spread); and 3) There is a system of inheritance that allows the next generation to increase the frequency of the successful (higher fitness) variants.

“The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.(that is a net 'fitness gain' within a 'stressed' environment i.e. remove the stress from the environment and the parent strain is always more 'fit')http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/

A. L. Hughes's New Non-Darwinian Mechanism of Adaption Was Discovered and Published in Detail by an ID Geneticist 25 Years Ago - Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig - December 2011Excerpt: The original species had a greater genetic potential to adapt to all possible environments. In the course of time this broad capacity for adaptation has been steadily reduced in the respective habitats by the accumulation of slightly deleterious alleles (as well as total losses of genetic functions redundant for a habitat), with the exception, of course, of that part which was necessary for coping with a species' particular environment....By mutative reduction of the genetic potential, modifications became "heritable". -- As strange as it may at first sound, however, this has nothing to do with the inheritance of acquired characteristics. For the characteristics were not acquired evolutionarily, but existed from the very beginning due to the greater adaptability. In many species only the genetic functions necessary for coping with the corresponding environment have been preserved from this adaptability potential. The "remainder" has been lost by mutations (accumulation of slightly disadvantageous alleles) -- in the formation of secondary species.http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/12/a_l_hughess_new053881.html

Be careful what you wish for. Students who are trained to take a long, hard, skeptical look at scientific theories like evolution could easily turn those critical thinking tools on their own religious beliefs - or yours. Are you really sure you want that?

The problem is that to be a Christian - in the sense that I used to understand it and, I'm guessing, you understand it - you either have to quietly ignore an awful lot of the Old Testament or you have a very odd sense of morality.

Though I have seen some very good defenses of the consistency of the morality in the old testament, without even resorting to the fact that atheists cannot ground morality in their worldview, what has impressed me about the Old Testament the most is its archeological accuracy. This following finding is simply jaw dropping for what was found;

The Physical Ashen Remains Of Sodom and Gomorrah - videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwTVFk1HK3Y

here are related notes:

Searching for Sodom and Gomorrah Excerpt: Most traditional theories place the cities at the southern end of the Dead Sea, in and around the well-watered and fertile plains and valleys south of the Lisan peninsula. At the southern end of this region, the Bible and other sources, including the first-century A.D. historian Josephus and the sixth-century A.D. Madaba Map, locate Zoar, one of the cities of the plain and the place to which Lot and his daughters fled following the destruction of Sodom (Genesis 19:22-23).* http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/sodom-and-gomorrah.asp

Genesis 19:22-23 Hurry up! Run there, for I cannot do anything until you get there.” Therefore the name of the city is Zoar. The sun had risen over the land when Lot reached Zoar.

The fact that some people felt OT morality needed defending suggests there's a problem there. And atheists can ground morality very comfortably in their 'worldview'. What no one can do, because of the is/ought problem, is ground any morality in objective reality.